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Fujimi 1/72 A-4E/F Topgun

By Sav. 08/Jun/2009

The Aircraft

Next in the line of agressor aircraft comes the A-4 Skyhawk built entirely out of the box from the excellent Fujimi Kit.

The Kit

This is kit comes from the excellent line of 1/72 scooters procuced by Fujimi. If you're after a quality Skyhawk in 72nd scale then this kit is the one you need to get your hands on. All the Fujimi A-4's feature finely scribed panel lines, detailed cockpit and separate aibrakes and leading edge slates.

This kit in particular can be built as either the E or F version as the avionics hump is seperate. With some small modifications this kit would also be an excellent base for many other variants such as the Aussie A-4G, RNZAF A-4 K Kahu, A-4SU or A-4 KU.

The kit features weapons in the form of three drop tanks, 2x LAU-10 Rocket Pods.

There are also a great selection of decals which covers 4 versions:

A-4E U.S Navy Fighter Weapons School (555-150044)

A-4F U.S Navy Fighter Weapons School (56/BU No Unknown)

A-4G of VF-885 RAAF (885/N13-154906)

A-4E Navy VC-1 (VA05/150044)

Construction

This kit is a dream to build, it's the first kit in some time that went together with no problems and needed no extra work whatsoever. The cockpit is nicely detailed along with the wheel wells and other details. Because of the amount of versions Fujimi want to cover there are some rather odd construction steps like the forward fuselage is built separately then attached to the main fuselage. However the kit is built so well that this doesn't cause any problems.

Painting

I painted this kit the same time as I did the F-18 because of the similar colours involved. The undersides of the slats were painted a darker grey but I'm not sure if this was correct. I have a feeling that they should have been the same colour as the outer sand.

Before painting the kit was pre-shaded with black however this effect was mostly lost with the two layers of camo that were applied over the top. Once the two tone sand camo was applied the lighter grey areas were masked off and sprayed.

The light grey area was applied to the to make the outline of the aircraft look like a russian fighter, presumably a Mig 15 or some such. This was done on a number of aggressor aircraft, took me a while to even notice that - I thought it was a hi-vis thing.

The masking was quite tricky as it needed to be perfect. If one wing was slightly different to the other, it would look way out. I measured each wing to ensure that it would be the same. They are still slightly out, but good enough for it not to be too obvious.

Finishing

Once the paint was dry, the standard coat of future was applied to seal every thing in before the washes and decals.

The decals caused a little problem due to some silvering, but this may have been due more to an un-even paint surface rather than a problem with the decals. The panel lines were highlighted with a wash of Tamiya's smoke and then a few pastels were applied to the middle of some panels to simulate wear.

All in all, a great kit. I have 3 more of these kits on the shelf and several more other versions including Ms',B's and Cs all of which are from Fujimi.